A little matter of substance

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The pundits are offering all kinds of reasons why John Kerry didn't get the expected bounce out of the Democratic convention. Despite the fact that Kerry's acceptance speech was delivered with authority, conviction, and energy, there's a simple explanation for the nonbounce bounce: The speech was too much like sugarless gum. The taste quickly evaporated because there was too little substance.

This was most glaring on Iraq. Kerry would persuade the world, he said, to "share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, reduce the risk to American soldiers" so he could bring home a substantial number of them. But how? Under what conditions would he bring the troops home? The next day he said he would look to substantially reduce our forces in Iraq by the end of his first term. How? And doesn't the very suggestion undermine the perception of American resolve, encouraging the insurgents to play the waiting game? The fact is that our troops will be needed in Iraq for a long time. There will be no free and painless exit.

Kerry charged that the Bush administration should have and could have won far greater international support. This overlooks the fact that the coalition included Britain, Spain, Italy, Japan  and that Muslim countries are now thinking of sending their own forces. Yes, two governments were missing, France and Germany. Its pacifism precluded Germany from ever being a serious prospect for military support. And France is notoriously uncomfortable with American power, going back to the 1960s when Charles de Gaulle pulled French forces out of NATO, prompting Secretary of State Dean Rusk to ask de Gaulle, "Should we dig up our dead in Normandy and take them home too?" France didn't support us on Iraq for several very simple reasons: because France sees itself as our rival rather than our ally, and because of the financial ties between Iraq and France and between Jacques Chirac and Saddam Hussein, along with huge money flows to the French through the United Nations' corrupt oil-for-food program. Would a few more months of American cajoling have turned the French around? Would France support America's policy simply because our president no longer wears a cowboy hat? Not likely. The same applies to Moscow. Russia and France, after all, have huge Muslim populations to appease.

Nor would a different president turn around the hostility to America from Muslim extremists. After all, we were attacked under President Clinton, and many of the terrorists came from countries generally supportive of us, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. So what does Senator Kerry mean when he says, "I know what we have to do in Iraq" ?

"Just " wars? As for his ideas about war, Kerry says he will restore the tradition that "America never goes to war because we want to. We only go to war because we have to." We had to in 1941  but history is otherwise against him. Was going to war in Korea or Vietnam a part of the tradition  never mind driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991? Does this mean we are ruling out all wars fought for humanitarian purposes, to prevent genocide, to defend democracy, or to uphold international law against aggression, as in Kuwait  a military action Kerry voted against?

Kerry also argued that the only justification for war would be a threat that would be "real and imminent." But imminence is no guide in the world of terrorism when innocents can be killed by a few terrorists, dressed as civilians, willing to commit suicide, carrying a nuclear bomb in a suitcase. Does this mean he opposes a pre-emptive policy against terrorism?

Kerry also argued that the only justification for war would be a threat that would be "real and imminent." But imminence is no guide in the world of terrorism when innocents can be killed by a few terrorists, dressed as civilians, willing to commit suicide, carrying a nuclear bomb in a suitcase. Does this mean he opposes a pre-emptive policy against terrorism?

His notion that "any attack will be met with a swift and a certain response" implies that we should wait until we have been attacked. But we can't wait for the terrorists to hit us. We must take the war to the terrorists on their turf. The same rationale must apply, too, if we find out that the terrorist networks are colluding secretly with rogue regimes. So exactly what does John Kerry mean when he says he will wage a "smarter" war on terror?

On one point the senator was clearly right, and that is that we cannot fight a war without a plan to win the peace. The brilliant success of the Iraq war has been followed by a largely botched sequel. What we must do is take all necessary measures, including military efforts, to express American resolve and its willingness to pay for peace, if necessary, with American forces.

Henry Adams once wrote, "Practical politics consists in ignoring facts." Perhaps it is too much to expect that a convention speech would be different. But Senator Kerry will now have to reveal the true measure of his policies in the campaign and the debates. Bromides simply won't do.

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